


I Just Want To Be Your Shadow

by revengeandotherdrugs



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood, Consensual Violence, Dark! Enjolras, Gen, Grantaire Angst, Mirror Universe, Non-sexual, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revengeandotherdrugs/pseuds/revengeandotherdrugs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Enjolras is violent and Grantaire will do anything for him.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	I Just Want To Be Your Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> TW for violence and self-hatred and some kinda graphic descriptions of injuries (i.e lots of blood).  
> Basically Enjolras has anger issues and Grantaire offers to be his punching bag out of a fucked up hero-worship/love thing. It’s really unhealthy and I’m sorry.  
> This was crossposted [here](http://bloodthirstypandasfromthesky.tumblr.com/post/125402595421/okay-so-i-was-listening-to-this-song-and-thought) on my tumblr  
> and the song that inspired it can be found [here](https://youtu.be/4AsvZge3IiQ)

Enjolras is a violent man. Not in the usual way to be sure, his delicate structure and distaste for mindless bloodshed keeps him far from the underground fight clubs and the men who frequent them, but he is violent all the same. He glares like breaking bone and speaks like the splattering of blood across the floor. He passes judgement like a knee to the chin and he believes like a punch in the gut.

Enjolras is a violent man, there are days when his own fire becomes too much, when he feels like he is burning from the inside. These are the days when he locks himself in his rooms and screams into the void and breaks the skin of his knuckles bloody and raw against the wall and doesn’t stop until he falls asleep from exhaustion and pain. It takes Combeferre and Courfeyrac both to drag him away from the ragged holes he has punched through the walls, to calm him down and bandage his hands and bank the fire in his soul until cool reason can reign again.

********

****  
  


“Perhaps another body would be more forgiving a target than the immovable wall” Grantaire had suggested one evening , noting the way Enjolras moved, all coiled rage with nowhere to go, fumbling with bandage-stiff fingers against the closure of his overcoat.

They were standing outside the cafe, alone save for the pigeons and the pink fingers of sunset streaking down from rooftops to paint their colors in the puddles on the street.

Enjolras had stilled, sharp gaze holding Grantaire pinned “are you offering to fight me?”

“I would do anything for you” he had replied, voice a little slurred, eyes a little glassy.

That was the first time Enjolras had hit him, a sharp fist across his cheekbone, an impact that rattled in Grantaire’s skull and shook every thought from his head.

Enjolras had run then, while he was still trying to gather his thoughts, a red shadow quickly lost between the buildings.

Grantaire had returned home with a spring in his step, a tight lipped smile and a bruise forming on his cheekbone like a kiss.

********

They develop a system governed by a set of constants. Enjolras always comes to him when he is stressed, when he is tired, when the world has done something else unjust and abominable, or when Grantaire himself has done something wrong. Then, Enjolras takes his frustrations out on Grantaire, fists on flesh, animal and base, and Grantaire stands and takes it. Afterwards Enjolras always apologizes, with guilt sitting heavy behind his eyes. Always offers to call a doctor, to go get help, but Grantaire always waves him away. And Enjolras, sickened on a profound level at what he has done, always runs as far away as he can and keeps that distance until once again his need to hit living flesh becomes too great to resist.

Grantaire enjoys it. Not the pain or the blood or the bruises that come after, but the closeness, the contact; he gets high off of Enjolras' attention and the thought, however erroneous, that he can be good for something after all.

********

He goes to Joly and Bossuet’s most often afterwards, on the nights when he doesn’t pass out in the street. Joly knows how to give stitches and set bones and Bossuet is always ready to greet him at the door with a case of wine and some raw meat for a black eye (or two). He goes to them most often. They don’t ask questions or attempt to pity him. He likes that.

********

"Why do you not run?" Enjolras asks him once. He is beautiful and terrifying with Grantaire's blood drying under his fingernails, hair like a halo around his head, lips parted and spit slick, and the fading sun painting his cheekbones and the rise of his forehead in brilliant gold.

"I will never run" he says, heart beating wildly against his throat "I desire only to live in your shadow"

Enjolras hits him so hard he can hear his jaw crack.

Grantaire licks blood and the dust of the street from his crooked teeth and smiles because this is the happiest he’ll ever be.

********

They don’t talk about it and their friends never bring it up directly although they know, they must know, on some level about what goes on after they leave the Musain for the night.

Jehan gives him sadeyes when he comes in the day afterwards, looking like hell and feeling like it too.

Feuilly buys him a drink Grantaire knows he can’t afford.

Bossuet smiles crookedly from across the room (he knows the fight-clubs Grantaire used to frequent and he knows that Grantaire hasn’t been to them in months).

Combeferre doesn’t look at him.

Joly and Bossuet treat him like nothing’s wrong because they’ve seen it all before.

Enjolras looks at him like he wants to throw up, or cry, or shout and then ignores Grantaire for the rest of the night, hands in fists at his sides, bruised knuckles standing stark against the pale gold of his skin.

********

Grantaire looks at himself in the small mirror he keeps above his chest of drawers, broken nose, black eyes, blood caking over his busted lips like lipstick on a cheap whore, garish red against his sallow skin. He touches reverent fingers to the circle of black and purple beneath one eye,  pressing it gently, addicted to the ache.

He likes the way he looks afterwards, cuts and marks and bruises blossoming like watercolors across his face, purple shades of plum and wine bleeding into soft sickly trails of yellow chartreuse and green harlequin that throb in time with the beat of his heart.

He hoards them, his marks,  treasures them like kisses while he can and is disappointed when they fade.They are a brand of Enjolras’ attention and a testament to Grantaire’s devotion written in his body with broken blood vessels, cracked bones and torn skin. They are evidence that Enjolras needs him, that he is worth something, that he can still bleed.

********

Enjolras hits with the same fury that appears when he makes a speech, blows upon blows fall like God’s judgement from the heavens, his blue eyes are like shards of glass, sharp and angry. He is the angel with the flaming sword, sent to cast judgement upon the unworthy, all heavenly fire and the pain that Grantaire craves like oxygen.

Perhaps Enjolras knows the depth of Grantaire's devotion to him, perhaps he doesn't. It doesn't matter really. The "I love you" s that fall like blood from his split lips are too quiet to hear anyway.

********

Grantaire is a boxer, he can handle it, if his skin is tough his heart is tougher. Or at least that’s what he tells himself as he stumbles to Joly’s one late night, stopping periodically to wipe the blood out of his eye with the sodden sleeve of his shirt. He needs stitches over his left eye from where Enjolras had thrown his head against the corner of a wall and his face is a mess of bruises and cuts, blood-purple and raw, but he is smiling. Blood mixes with spit on his teeth, staining them a horrific red. He feels like laughing, or singing or screaming something primal and broken to the sky. But one of his ribs is cracked and it hurts to breathe so he stays silent.

“I have been touched by an angel” he tells the men on the stoop of the pub, running disbelieving fingers over the tacky pool of blood in his eyebrow. The blood on his fingers looks like molten gold in the lamplight. “He has given me a gift, a gift he has never given anyone else. He has given me pain. And Messieurs, if that is all he ever gives me I shall be content”

He collapses in the street and they leave him there, the strange ugly boy with the broken face and the rapture of heaven in his eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Just for the record I love Enjolras and know that he would never actually behave this way towards his friends and that I'm playing off of commonly missused dynamics yada yada yada. This fic was born out of a need to make myself suffer rather than canonical accuracy xD


End file.
